Poetry by Duane Locke
Added 8 November 1999
This is a section where I post poems sent to me by people who have found my site and wish to display their own works. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!
This poem is by Duane Locke
The Dutch are Known for Cleanliness
A fifty year old man
Getting fat
Picked up a T-shirt
Left on a park bench.
It was the shirt
He gave his young,
Slender red haired lover
For her birthday.
He held the shirt between
Two fingers, barely touched it,
Dropped in the trash.
Amsterdam is a neat city.
BIO: Duane Locke, Doctor of Philosophy In Renaissance Literature, Poet in Residence at a university for over 20 years, Professor Emeritus of the Humanities, Publisher of over 2,000 poems in print magazines such as American Poetry Review, Nation, Literary Quarterly, Black Moon and Bitter Oleander, his 14th and latest book of poems being WATCHING WISTERIA (to order see http://www.vidapublishing.com or call Small Press Distribution, 1-800-869-7553), photographer (listed in PSA's Who's Who in Photography as one of the top 20 nature photographers, recently has photographs in Glass Cherry and Yefieff), currently having a one-man show of his paintings at the Pyramid Gallery in Tampa, now lives alone, unknown, isolated in an old, decaying, two-story, inherited house in the sunny Tampa slums. The egregious ugliness of his neighborhood has recently been mitigated by the esthetic activities of the police. The police have posted bright yellow and orange posters on all poles to advertise the location in a high drug district. Duane, lives as a stranger and alien, as he does not understand the customs, costumes, or language, some form of postmodern English of this violent neighborhood.
